After 56 years, war hero gets his medals

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KOREAN WAR VETERAN William Marshall, 77, of El Sobrante, smiles Friday inRichmond after finally receiving his Purple Heart and his Prisoner of War Medal almost56 years after the fact. (GREGORY URQUIAGA Staff photo)

WOUNDED TWICE and taken captive by North Korean and Chinese forces during the Korean War winter offensive in 1950, U.S. Army Sgt. William Oscar Marshall never gave up, escaping in early 1951.

In the decades that followed the war, Marshall returned stateside, married and raised a family, worked as a superintendent for the parks department in his hometown of Los Angeles and went about his life.

But he never relinquished the desire to have his military record properly reflect his experience.

The day he waited 56 years to see arrived Friday, when Marshall, 77 and living in El Sobrante, was presented with the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster and the Prisoner of War Medal on National POW/MIA Recognition Day.

“It’s been a long time coming, but I never gave up,” Marshall said before the presentation. “It means that I accomplished what I set out to do when I first volunteered.”

Maj. Gen. Dan Helix and U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, presented the medals in a ceremony at St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Richmond, where Marshall is a member and a retired deacon on the board.

Such ceremonies usually are small and somewhat private, but Marshall

wanted to share the moment with his family and fellow church members. Representatives of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Veterans of California and the Blue Star Moms also attended to honor one of their own.

“Today I want to talk about a military hero,” Helix said. “He answered his country’s call and served with distinction.”

Marshall leaned on his cane as Helix spoke.

“You’ve gone a long time, sergeant, without the recognition you deserved. I’m very proud to be here today to rectify that,” said Helix, who was wounded twice in Korea.

Marshall was 17 when he enlisted in 1948, needing his mother’s permission because he was underage.

He was wounded twice in a two-week span in November 1950 and captured in December just north of the 38th Parallel in Pyongyang, Korea. He was held in a prison camp for a little more than a month.

He and four others escaped in February and made their way through gunfire for four days before encountering the 514th U.S. Army Truck Company, which gave them clean clothes, food and weapons.

After returning to his unit and being sent to a field hospital for five days, Marshall returned to active combat.

“When I got out of captivity, the only thing I could think of was run — run, run, run,” he told the audience Friday. “And I ran for four days.”

He acknowledged everyone who came to the ceremony and said, “A lot of my buddies who were with me aren’t here anymore. Of the 400-some men I knew, only one is still alive.”

Marshall said he plans to fly to Florida to see his comrade-in-arms.

After he retired from the Los Angeles parks department, Marshall moved to the Bay Area and remarried. He lives in El Sobrante and said most of his family lives around Richmond and El Cerrito.

Marshall had been awarded the Combat Infantry Badge, the Korean Service Ribbon with three Bronze Stars and the Korean Presidential Citation. But for decades his official record was incomplete.

The Concord Veterans Center worked to verify and validate his record, and Miller and his office saw that the acknowledgment came in a timely manner.

“Congressman Miller deserves an enormous amount of credit,” Helix said after the ceremony. “I’ve dealt with the bureaucracy, and I know that to correct the record like this takes someone at the congressional level.”

“I think it’s important for the community to know that we can honor heroic service which may be overlooked, that over time it can be corrected,” he said. “Even if it is late, it is worthwhile.”

Marshall’s wife, Betty Marshall, dabbed her eyes during the presentation and later reflected on the occasion.

“I really never thought it would happen,” she said. “It just shows something’s never too big to go back and correct the mistakes. This has been his dream.”